Feature Article

Geoengineering efforts to bring oxygen into the deep Baltic should be abandoned, says Daniel J. Conley.

North Carolina sea-level rise accelerates while state legislators put the brakes on research.

Brazil’s celebrated coastal metropolis is defined by stark contrasts, both geographic and economic. Extravagant
wealth rings the city’s luxurious beaches, while poverty looks on from the haphazard developments called favelas that sprawl across the surrounding hills. Such conspicuous inequality is symbolic of the challenge humanity faces on a
global scale — a problem that restricted progress at the Rio+20 meeting to a modest and mostly voluntary set of commitments.

If farmers do not rein in the use of antibiotics for livestock, people will be severely affected. (Editorial)

The agreement for modest commitments to sustainable development after 2015, reached at last week's Earth conference in Rio de Janeiro, has been roundly condemned as inadequate, or even an outright failure. The document is full of legalese and vague assertions, and it postpones the making of potentially significant decisions and assigning accountability to an uncertain future. (Editorial)

Global climate carbon-cycle models predict acceleration of soil organic carbon losses to the atmosphere with warming, but the size of this feedback is poorly known. The temperature sensitivity of soil carbon decomposition is commonly determined by measuring changes in the rate of carbon dioxide (CO2) production under controlled laboratory conditions.

From the 17th century, Cinchona figured prominently in European pharmacopiae. Many European countries were frantically after Cinchona in the early 18th century. In the 18th century, a search for this tree occurred consistently. The
usefulness of the bark of Cinchona in treating fevers was established and the European medical personnel were
exploring for substitutes, driven by the following reasons: trade monopolies necessitated the search for species that had